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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Noreena Hertz Quotes

It’s not that I am against the rich giving money to charities. I’m all for it, and we should think of ways of encouraging more of it. But I also believe that states, rather than individuals, are ultimately a better bet for delivering a fair and just world and reconciling differing interests.

– Noreena Hertz

The challenge for corporations, if offices were to become obsolete, is twofold. How will they be able to retain their distinct cultures? And how will they be able to ensure that all employees, wherever they work from, share a united identity and vision?

– Noreena Hertz

Governments have been ceding power to big multinational corporations in the market. We see the manifest in a variety of ways. Where governments are giving up power to big international institutions like the World Trade Organization or NAFTA, which are disabling governments’ ability to protect the rights of their own people.

– Noreena Hertz

Experience is not the poor relation of expertise. Valuable insights in business often come from the people on the ground.

– Noreena Hertz

I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences.

– Noreena Hertz

We need to know how we are feeling. Mindfully acknowledging our feelings serves as an ’emotional thermostat’ that recalibrates our decision making. It’s not that we can’t be anxious, it’s that we need to acknowledge to ourselves that we are.

– Noreena Hertz

From solar to electric cars, from geothermal to reconfiguring the grid, the scale of investment needed in green technologies in order to meet whatever agreements on emissions reductions are finally agreed will be immense.

– Noreena Hertz

Having women on boards is good for women, good for the economy and good for society. A win-win-win outcome: how rare.

– Noreena Hertz

Back in the 1970s, Kodak tried to give $25m to a black civil rights organisation in Rochester, New York. The company’s shareholders rose up in arms: making this politically charged offering wasn’t the reason they had entrusted Kodak with their money. The donation was withdrawn.

– Noreena Hertz

The term ‘glass ceiling’ was coined in 1984. More than 20 years later, the ceiling has barely cracked. There isn’t a single country in the world that has as many female as male politicians. In business, the situation is even worse. Its highest echelon – the board – remains a chauvinist’s dream.

– Noreena Hertz

I try to take a weekly digital Sabbath, batch my emails so I deal with them a few times a day rather than constantly, and increasingly give myself permission to ignore unsolicited communiques. I try, too, to give others more slack. The respond-now culture is a two-way street. I’m trying to be more mindful of that.

– Noreena Hertz

I was really interested to see whether we could make predictions or forecasts by listening in on what people were saying on social media.

– Noreena Hertz

In an age that is sometimes nowadays frightening or confusing, we feel reassured by the almost parental-like authority of experts who tell us so clearly what it is we can and cannot do.

– Noreena Hertz

At the end of the day, philanthropy can only ever be an adjunct to what governments provide. And government coffers need to be replenished.

– Noreena Hertz

I grew up in a home where I was literally told from a young age, ‘No daughter of mine will ever wash a man’s socks,’ and I am pleased to say I never have. It was made clear that whatever I wanted to do I should aspire to, regardless of my gender.

– Noreena Hertz

What my research has shown me is that experts tend on the whole to form very rigid camps; that within these camps, a dominant perspective emerges that often silences opposition; that experts move with the prevailing winds, often hero-worshipping their own gurus.

– Noreena Hertz

My parents decided – because they were not going to teach us anything Jewish at home – to send both me and my sister to a Jewish primary school. So I went to Kerem Primary School in Hampstead Garden Suburb. But, for me, that school really didn’t work that well.

– Noreena Hertz

Managing dissent is about recognizing the value of disagreement, discord and difference.

– Noreena Hertz

We are all socialists now, it seems. John McCain, David Cameron and Gordon Brown attack bankers’ irresponsible behaviour and salaries, and call for state intervention in the financial markets. But these calls will not get them elected or re-elected if they are addressed only to the banking sector.

– Noreena Hertz

The World Trade Organization is an organization that defends trade interests. I think the problem is less that they exist. The problem is that internationally we’ve only got an organization that protects trade interests. Surely we need some kind of counterweight to protect human rights and the environment, too.

– Noreena Hertz

When Apple introduced its game-changing iPhone in 2007, Nokia was caught sleeping on the job. Although it had actually developed an iPhone-style device – complete with a color touchscreen, maps, online shopping, the lot – some seven years earlier. Astonishingly, it never released the product.

– Noreena Hertz

Forcing companies to recruit away from the golf course might lead to the appointment of more women from NGOs and academia and medicine, all of whom are likely to understand such concepts as stewardship and sustainability much better than men picked from the usual hunting grounds.

– Noreena Hertz

Most philanthropists would still rather donate to elite schools, concert halls or religious groups than help the poor or sick.

– Noreena Hertz

Language is too complex for a computer to understand. It’s not going to be able to make sense of what people are saying en masse. We need a new type of discipline that puts together computer scientists and social scientists, who can add context to the situation.

– Noreena Hertz

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions – prime ministers, presidents and chief executives – and so I’m all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere.

– Noreena Hertz

Stress makes us prone to tunnel vision, less likely to take in the information we need. Anxiety makes us more risk-averse than we would be regularly and more deferential.

– Noreena Hertz

Philanthropists today want input into how their monies are being deployed. The big question is, can governments use this insight to sell the rich the idea of paying more tax rather than spend more on charitable giving?

– Noreena Hertz

I’ve become increasingly fascinated with social media to improve on traditional ways of preparing for and predicting the future.

– Noreena Hertz

Without industry, finance and government consciously and collaboratively ensuring that capital flows to where it is needed in order to ensure the scaling up of climate change solutions, whatever deal is agreed risks never being realised.

– Noreena Hertz

My mother was really involved with the Refusenik campaign with Soviet Union Jews. They would come and stay at our house, some of them, after they managed to get out of the Soviet Union at the time. There were things that were Jewish-related happening in my house quite consistently, but it was much more from a kind of activist standpoint.

– Noreena Hertz

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